I'm considering open sourcing a project I've been working on for over a year now. It would be great to get some advice from people here.

The project allows Estate Agents (realtors in the US) to create a website for themselves just by entering some basic information. It is multilingual and the admin panel allows the configuration of the basic look and feel of the website. I am yet to add theming support.

I have found it more difficult to market than I had expected and rather than abandoning the project completely I think open sourcing it might be a good way of ensuring that the code I have written does not go to waste.

This would be my first open source project though and I am not sure how much work it would involve and if there are downsides I am not aware of.

Would love to find out if anyone here thinks it would be a good or bad idea and why. Also, if I were to go ahead what are some of the ways I could get more people to participate in the project?

As far as marketing it I believe that's largely just connecting with the right people (those with connections). Or sales specialist who would approach estate agents in the right way.

etee:

open sourcing it might be a good way of ensuring that the code I have written does not go to waste.

If this coding experience has strengthened you in software development, and you don't plan on quitting software development, then I wouldn't consider it a waste. It is perfectly normal and healthy to throw away code.

etee:

This would be my first open source project though and I am not sure how much work it would involve and if there are downsides I am not aware of.

The downside(s) depends on the open source license you choose to use. If you use the MIT license you are authorizing commercial for-profit reuse of your code. There are many open source licenses to choose from so you can choose how much freedom you'll be permitting with them. Of course the downsides could be considered upsides.

As far as how much work; it doesn't take much at all. You can simply use git to add all the project's file to a code repository on Github (or other git repositories). You'll need to modify a README.md file to give people an idea about the code, project, and you vision for it.

etee:

Would love to find out if anyone here thinks it would be a good or bad idea and why.

It's a good idea to have a "first open source project". I can't speak as to the future of interest in it as I have my own narrow developer experience. But being active in open source will always be helpful to both you and the community.

One thing you should consider if there are any great "tools" you've developed that exist within the site. And if you can take that and separate it out into reusable code for other developers on their projects. These kinds of open source projects get much more traction: developers helping developers"

etee:

what are some of the ways I could get more people to participate in the project?

Blog about it, your vision, what you're looking for, who might be interested and why. Do many blogs on it. Focus individually on realtors and developers in blogs post (only one per post). Seek out other blogs or developers posts online who share you vision and link back to your blog posts or open source Github page. And if you'd like you can list that you're looking for committed dev help from a site like https://www.codetriage.com/

I hadn't heard of codetriage before - it is an awesome concept. I will certainly make use of it.

I am not great at blogging (or marketing in general) but it does seem like something I will have to put more effort into. The ideal outcome of open sourcing would be to get interest from people who are interested in marketing and talking about the project while I carry on with the coding

As to the licence I think I would have to go with MIT. I have benefited from a lot of projects out there with that license and I guess it would not be so nice to use a more restrictive license. Having said that, I am not so knowledgeable about that topic so I am open to advice.

Yes, the time I spent has been useful as a learning experience but I really would like to make something more of the project. Right now I'm leaning quite heavily towards open sourcing it.